When you half wake in the middle of the night … you feel discombobulated.
Is there a monster under my bed? Can I face that awful meeting tomorrow? If I am the monster below the bed, then who is that person sleeping above me? We are not quite sure what is real, what isn’t, and how it all fits together. The lines between our feelings and reality are all blurred. But then, awake with a coffee under the belt, the world has settled down to it’s familiar order once again.
However when you suffer a mental health issue, things do not always normalize ao easily.
Our mental framework is partly unconscious and partly conscious. Partly haphazard assumptions and partly deliberately controlled. Much like the layout of a webpage, there are templates and there are posts. Once the templates have been chosen (layout, colour scheme and so on) we are reluctant to go to the effort of changing it. We simply upload regular posts.
Our life is a bit like that. We run by default: pre-existing assumptions and habits. What we take for granted is our “reality.” Like waiting for the green light in the traffic before we go. Or saying “How are you, fine thanks,” when meeting someone new. Or wearing clothes in public.
Our DEFAULT settings are
- Our background culture, our family culture (strict or easy going) and education – our broad contextual milieu.
- Our basic personality, intelligence, bodily attributes etc. (Core self-image?)
- The various habits we have picked up along the way, good and bad. And the various attitudes we have, good and bad.
Thus we have our personal behaviour: Always being punctual; pulling a skeptical face when we disagree with something; regarding strangers with suspicion; always choosing meat at a restaurant; saving money on clothes by waiting until holes appear to dump them. These are the thousand and one unconscious and semi-conscious behaviours that have become our natural default over time. Which is why you can’t teach most old dogs any new tricks, and it is better to form good habits in ones childhood!
But some things cause the default boundaries of our framework to blur:
Drugs
Loneliness (separation from other people who serve as a reality check)
Powerful situations (eg a trauma such as kidnapping; severe lack of sleep or uncontained new experience such as skydiving; intense social pressure.)
Old age
Illness, physical or mental
What they all have in common is that they cause the normal frameworks to break down. So, though you NEVER eat sushi, in an environment where you are pressured enough, you will.
My take-home is that
1. You have to spend time re-examining your beliefs and habits – this is an ongoing process of self-examination and improvement. Self Awareness. An ongoing commitment to be better. ie Work on your semi and unconscious framework.
2. Realise that you decide, and are in control of, how you act and react in every situation. Thus your ‘framework’ needs constant strengthening, readjusting and care. When a boundary-blurring event occurs, YOU CAN DECIDE what to do; there is no magical reality that independently asserts itself. ie Work on your conscious framework.
This is why self-defence training teaches you to react decisively to the unexpected.
This is why your moral/ spiritual/ ethical values need to become deeply believed and conscious.
This is why when you are severely pressured (bullied?) you must be able to assert yourself.
What do the above broad situations have in common? REHEARSAL of your boundaries is essential for when a problem situation arises.
How do you rehearse?
- Inner rehearsal. (Self talk.) You remind yourself: “Hey doing that line of coke might kill you if it’s been laced with Warfarin (rat poison.)” let the sensible part of you correct the wilder part of you (and yes this is normal – we need emotional flexibility – being able to ad-lib some situation.)
- Physical rehearsal – this could be asin self-defence training for example.
- Verbal-emotional rehearsal. When faced with a difficult interpersonal situation, you get hold of a trusted friend, and “find the right words” to use. You actually role-play the situation with some variations. This helps you clarify things and gives you confidence. In my experience this is extremely useful and hardly ever used. This is rehearsing solutions and not just mindlessly complaining in a stuck-loop cycle, which is all too common.
Stop complaining, it’s a waste of breath. Move to solutions. “Words are opinions, actions are truth.” (A paraphrase of Marcus Aurelius a famous Stoic of history.)
Leave a Reply